


Good Company

by boredbyreality



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dating, Dorks in Love, F/M, Fluff, Identity Porn, M/M, Trans Character, if you were wondering, it's just really cute and sweet ok nothing bad happening in this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-17
Updated: 2017-01-17
Packaged: 2018-09-18 05:57:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9371114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boredbyreality/pseuds/boredbyreality
Summary: This is definitely not how Hux thought his second date with Ben would go, but he's not complaining.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for an anon prompt I got for Trans Tuesdays which you can find [here](http://boredbyreality.tumblr.com/post/156005391187/pansexual-but-inexperienced-college-student-hux). I thought this was going to be around 1k words tops, and look where that got me. 3.7k. Oh well.

His date is late, and he is running through all the possible reasons why Ben isn’t there yet. His left knee started bouncing up and down of its own accord about a minute ago, a clear sign of his mild irritation. Whether it's because of his absent date or him thinking himself delusional in hoping that the whole dating thing would work out this time, he cannot tell. The music playing in the background is not helping the matter, the volume way too high for his tastes, and he’s wondering why Ben suggested the pub in the first place. It was at a convenient location for the both of them, but other than that there was not much going for the small establishment. Sure, it had a nice aesthetic with all the vintage movie posters on the walls and its dark wooden tables, little things that Hux appreciated, and he supposed that once you got past the volume of the music and could actually focus on the melody it was rather pleasant – the bar was playing one of Queen’s records at the moment, which Hux certainly didn’t mind. It would all be so much better though if Ben finally turned up.

He barely looks up when a girl in a cute navy dress sits right next to him at the bar despite all the other stools being annoyingly empty, what with everyone else seemingly still away on spring break and the pub being one led by students. She swings her legs back and forth, the skirt barely covering her knees now, showing off nicely shaped calves and the black converse on her feet. He sighs, remembering that Ben wore identical shoes to their first date.

The smell of her perfume drifts towards him, the subtle flowery scent surprisingly pleasant, unlike what he’d expect from a girl who looks all dressed up for a party, and he wonders what she’s doing here at this hour. Her arms are covered by clearly excessive amount of soft black material, as if she was trying to hide behind it, but Hux finds himself transfixed by the nearly translucent fabric. It seems to be glittering in the low light with every shift of her arms, and makes him think of the way Ben’s eyes lit up when Hux agreed to go out with him again. He smiles at the memory, hands playing with the glass of water he’s been drinking for the past few minutes.

‘Have you been here long?’ the girl asks after she sets her tiny handbag on her lap, fingers now nervously picking at the edges of her sleeves. Her voice spoken loudly over the music still manages to sound low and sensual to Hux's ears, strangely familiar although he cannot place where he has heard it before, deciding that perhaps it reminds him of an ex girlfriend. He always preferred strong women with deeper voices, and he is acutely aware of how fast his body is reacting to the stranger. She’s pretty, the flared dress nicely accentuating her hips and narrow waist, broad shoulders lost in the swathes of flowy material. Long dark hair curls around her neck in thick waves, and as much as Hux tries to fight the feeling he won’t lie to himself and deny that he’d love to touch it, check with his fingertips if it feels as soft as it looks.

He averts his eyes, cursing Ben for his tardiness, and wills himself to reply.

‘No, not at all,’ he manages, trying to convince himself that he will walk away from the girl as soon as Ben shows up, that this is just a convenient distraction that will help him pass the time.

Despite his best efforts to not fall for the girl in the absence of his actual date, soon he finds himself drawn towards her and immensely enjoying her company. Her melodious voice is easy to listen to, and before long he’s laughing at something she said. A few more minutes pass and he chances a glance towards her, but with the way she’s leaning against the bar her face is still mostly obscured by a wall of dark hair. He hopes she doesn’t notice him checking his phone. Ben is nearly forty minutes late by now, and Hux is slowly coming to terms with the fact that he’s been stood up. He’s trying his best not to show how crestfallen he is, but something about his face must give him out and catch the girl’s attention.

‘Is there something wrong?’ she asks, visibly leaning away from him for the first time since they started talking. Her hands abandon the glass of cranberry cider she ordered right after she talked Hux into getting something stronger than water for himself, and are back to fiddling with the sleeves of her dress. The nervous energy emanating from her seems to be extremely contagious, and in no time Hux is back to unconsciously bouncing his leg up and down under the bar counter. She takes a deep breath to steady herself before speaking up again.

‘I thought we were having a good time together, but if I'm making you uncomfortable you can tell me so, I won’t mind,’ she says, barely above a whisper, and Hux momentarily feels bad for making her lose the warm spark that seemed to make her glow in his presence. The feeling quickly goes away when he remembers his failed date, and Hux’s irritation at Ben lowers his inhibitions enough for him to finally speak his mind.

‘I’m sorry, you’re a fantastic girl with a great sense of humour and amazing fashion style and I’d love to get to know you better, but I was supposed to meet with someone else here,’ he rambles all in one breath. ‘It seems that he stood me up, should have known not to get my hopes up,’ he adds with a humourless laugh, looking down at his now empty glass of Guinness and not daring to raise his head just yet. Without any signs of her trying to interrupt him he plows on, for the first time in his life not questioning whether that’s a good idea or not.

‘You see, I really like the guy,’ he says, fondness slipping into his voice. ‘He’s passionate, extremely sassy and kind of a brat but in an endearing sort of way, good-looking too, and he’s not a total idiot which is always a plus, and he makes me laugh more than anybody else ever did, all of which I would of course never tell him because I’m sure I would never hear the end of it.’ He smiles at that, he cannot help it. Ben made him ridiculously happy during their first and last date, Hux felt like he belonged, like someone genuinely cared for him and wanted to listen to him, even to his more scathing remarks and perhaps not so tactful criticism.

‘I never thought a guy like that would ever be interested in me in _that_ way, and he didn’t show up today, didn’t text me or try to call me either, so I guess I was right like I fucking always am,’ he ends with a sigh and wishes he still had some alcohol left but doesn’t feel up to the task of getting the bartender’s attention right now.

The girl seems to be waiting for him to continue, or simply allowing him to compose himself after this moment of weakness. That, or she’s just realised how he had used her as something convenient to help him pass the time, he’s been in the same position himself often enough to know how that feels, the realisation slowly dawning on him. It’s hard to tell what she’s really thinking without looking at her face, but when he steals a glance in her direction she turns away, visibly shrinking in her chair.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say any of that, I don’t know what came over me, I barely know you, it’s just– ’ he cuts himself off, wondering when he went from pleasantly warm to dangerously tipsy after just one beer.

‘I just really thought he would be the one guy to not let me down,’ he finishes, surprised at how tearful his own voice sounds. This wasn’t supposed to happen, heedlessly spilling all his woes to a random girl at a bar was never a part of any of his plans. Hux knows she’s looking at him but he cannot muster the courage to lift his head again in fear of what he will see on her face once he does. He knows it’s a hopeless case, him holding onto hope that it was a simple misunderstanding, that he got the hour wrong, or that Ben will come barging through the door, his booming voice full of apologies, his strong arms embracing Hux from behind and making it all okay. A pipe dream, that’s what it was.

‘So you’re gay?’ she asks in a small voice, just loud enough for him to hear over the music.

‘No, I’m pan, and no, it’s not just a phase,’ he replies without thinking, by now an automatic reaction to that question. That’s when he looks up, and finds himself diving head first into deepest, darkest, most captivating pair of eyes he has ever seen. And that’s also when he realises that he actually _did_ see those eyes before, and that they belong to his Ben, and that somehow he must be way more drunk than one beer should ever allow him to be.

‘Bloody hell,’ he says, his hand coming up to cover his mouth. He can feel the deep blush spreading across his cheeks and his own eyes must have widened comically if the twitching at the corners of Ben’s lips which usually precedes his smile is anything to go by. ‘Ben, you bastard, why didn’t you tell me sooner!’, he all but shouts, his hand flying away from his mouth and knocking over his luckily empty glass. Ben is biting on his lips, his expression going from amusement through a quick flash of anger and disappointment and finally settling on unbridled incredulity.

‘I thought you _knew_ , I thought you _realised_ and decided not to comment on it, oh my god Hux, how the hell was I supposed to know that you didn’t recognise me!’

It is Hux’s turn to stare in disbelief as he is trying to put together how _he_ was supposed to know that this gorgeous girl that started talking him up out of the blue at the pub was actually his date, a person whom he had known for quite some time, true, but as a _guy_ , a particularly _well-built_ guy, and a really tall one to top it all off. He supposes that maybe he wasn’t paying enough attention when the girl – Ben… He has to ask, talk this through, clarify things, save himself from further disaster. This was a complete trainwreck already and he refused to let this dire misunderstanding continue and hinder any chances they might have at a future relationship. Because hell if he was giving up on Ben. Perhaps a pub isn’t the best place for explaining the whole situation, but he needs answers, and the sooner the better.

‘Ben, we need to have a serious talk, _now_.’

‘Kylo.’

‘Kylo?’

‘Well, technically Kylo Ren,’ they say, not exactly helping with Hux’s bewilderment. ‘Figured since me being genderfluid is already out the bag might as well come out with my real name too. It’s Kylo Ren.’

‘Your real…?’ Hux takes a deep breath at that. Yes, they did meet at uni after they both went to a social organised by the LGBT Society at the beginning of the term. They've been seeing each other with surprising regularity since then, and often enough for Hux to lose count, hitting it off as friends before they decided that it would be a good idea to go out on a date together, just to see how it will go. He has assumed that Ben was simply gay. Not… This. All of that.

He has no idea how he managed to miss such a thing, what with all the signs that were there.

Ben getting extremely agitated whenever people would compliment him on his ‘man bun’, insisting that it was ‘just a bun’, that it didn't have a gender, delving into a long tirade about it every single time it happened.

All the nail polish Ben wore, blue or green or orange, never black like Hux would have expected from a guy like him. And it always matched with something else Ben was wearing that day, either his shirt, or his hair tie, or his belt. After Ben discovered that Hux had a baby pink shirt he refused to wear because of the way it supposedly clashed with his ginger hair, Ben insisted he put it on for their first date, and sure as hell Ben’s fingernails were a matching light shade of pink. Ben smiled and blushed adorably when Hux complimented him on them.

And then there was Ben giving Phasma, Hux's close friend and a mountain of a woman, fashion advice after she showed up to a meeting with them once wearing a particularly unflattering dress, or so Ben said. But it wasn’t all empty criticism on Ben’s side when he followed it with a comment about their similar built and an offer to go shopping with Phasma so they could find something nice for themselves. Now that Hux thought about it, afterwards she did mention finding a gorgeous navy dress that was a bit too big on her but perfect on someone else. Hux didn’t press the matter, but he should have realised she meant Ben. The dress really was perfect, if the way Hux was transfixed by it earlier this evening was anything to go by.

He was dragged out of his thoughts by Kylo’s reply.

‘Yes, my real name, not my preferred name, that’s just bullshit straight cis people say, this is the name I use and therefore it’s my real one, as real as any other, not something I _prefer_ , and if you cannot accept that then I don’t see a point in talking anymore,’ they say in a rush, folding their arms over their chest defensively and straightening out for the first time since they walked into the pub, and Hux is so happy to see this that he thinks he just might spontaneously combust. Seeing now what first lured him towards Kylo, that aura of authority and strength emanating from them, challenging anyone and everyone who dares to cross them – it’s making him think stupid, sappy things. But there’s a certain vulnerability to them, too, the way their eyebrows twitch under Hux’s scrutinizing gaze, their lips held in a clear pout, so soft and at odds with what their posture is trying to convey.

‘Kylo Ren, I think I might just bloody kiss you now, you idiot,’ Hux says, his face splitting into an uncontrollable grin. ‘I like you, you know,’ he adds softly for good measure.

‘You do?’ Kylo asks, all bravado melting away instantly, the seemingly childish hope lighting up their features. Hux catches himself nodding fervently, surprised at how hard he’s smiling and how little Kylo’s coming out changes between them.

‘Of course,’ he replies, leaving no space for argument. ‘One question though: what pronouns should I use? I mean, which ones do you feel comfortable with?’

‘Oh, right, shit,’ Kylo mumbles, dragging a hand across their face. It’s such a simple gesture, one Hux has seen so many times during their study sessions, and right now he finds it extremely endearing. It’s something familiar, something to remind him that Ben and Kylo are the same person, and that he might be slowly falling in love with them.

‘Her. Today. My pronouns today are female, I mean. They might change tomorrow, but for now they’re that,’ Kylo says, and Hux nods in acknowledgement.

‘May I kiss you then, m’lady?’ he asks playfully, his left hand moving to land gently on Kylo’s knee.

‘Hux, that’s not a laughing matter, don’t call me that,’ Kylo says with a frown, her lips set in a pout that does make Hux laugh, and she rolls her eyes at him with exasperation.

‘What should I call you then? Baby, doll, honey?’ Kylo laughs lightly at that and shakes her head, her eyes crinkling up at the corners, clearly happy with Hux’s reaction. ‘Or would you prefer something more neutral? You didn’t exactly explain much.’ He pauses, tilting his head, fingers of his free hand tapping lightly against the counter of the bar. ‘Obviously, I know what genderfluid means, but I’m drawing a blank as to what it means for you, specifically. And I’d like to know.’

He looks at her, trying to show how genuinely interested he is, how much he wants to understand, how he longs for Kylo to trust him enough to be able to talk about it. She takes a deep breath and looks back at him, her eyes glimmering in the low light of the pub.

‘Well, I have. Days. Weeks.’ She pauses, looking away from him for a second, seemingly searching for the right words. Hux, on the other hand, finds himself unable to look away. ‘When I feel comfortable with whom I was born as, when I feel that I can call myself a man, when it simply _fits_. And then there are days, whole weeks even, when I feel that I’m a… A girl. And that I’d like to be seen and treated as one,’ she continues, chewing on her lower lip, as if still unsure of Hux’s acceptance of her. Hux wants to hurl himself at her, show her that it’s all ok with him, but he doesn’t dare move, sensing that she’s not finished just yet.

‘I knew that it might be weird for you, being friends with me. It’s not like most guys react warmly to trans people, especially those who switch between pronouns, not to mention the stigma put on trans women by the society.’ She sighs. ‘But then I thought hey, it might be worth a try, you know?’ she says as she pushes her hair back and ties it up in a neat bun, her hands landing on the back of her neck after she’s done fiddling with the hairband. ‘I thought _you_ might be worth a try.’

A long silence stretches between them, Kylo’s hands moving restlessly from her neck down her chest and up towards her glass of cranberry cider still standing on the bar, abandoning the motion halfway through and clenching into fists in her lap. Hux is trying to wrap his head around the situation, the idea that for once he has found someone who wants to make a relationship work just as much as he does.

‘You could have told me about this sooner,’ is all he manages to say once he regains his voice. He feels weirdly flattered, irritated at himself for his obliviousness, too, but most of all – he’s completely smitten with Kylo.

‘Hux, I wanted to,’ she says, ‘I really did. But then kept questioning myself, waiting for the right moment, but of course it never fucking came and it sort of would have been really awkward if I was to suddenly jump at you after we’ve known each other for two months and said that I’m not exactly a guy.’

She chuckles and licks her lips, looking around the bar before setting her eyes on him once more. ‘So then I kept telling myself that I could keep it down, try to be the guy you took me for, but when you agreed to another date. Well.’ She shrugs, and Hux finally decides to make his move and lunges at her, his arms wounding around her shoulders and holding her wide frame with all the strength he has in him.

‘You can tell me anything, any time you want.’

Kylo goes completely stiff, but Hux keeps holding onto her, mumbling sweet nonsense into her ear. She releases the breath she was holding and wraps her strong arms around him, her whole body starting to shake, and before she knows it she’s crying into his shoulder, and he still has no intention of letting her go, and it’s the most intoxicating, wonderful thing that has ever happened to her.

When she finally pulls away from him her eyes are red and puffy, but she has the biggest, goofiest smile on her face, and Hux is falling head over heels for her. His gaze falls down to her lips before he drags it back up, and Kylo seems to be thinking the same thing. She meets him halfway, her lips soft and warm, pushing gently against his. The kiss is sweet, unhurried, and makes Hux feel like he’s floating, suspended in time and space. His palms spread against her back as hers travel up his sides and further, inching towards his neck and soon enough enveloping his face in their gentle warmth. He moans into her mouth, and is grateful for _Bohemian Rhapsody_ blasting from the speakers behind the bar, conveniently covering up any indecent sounds they are making.

Hux pulls back before things can escalate any further, suddenly acutely aware of the bartender’s gaze upon them. He clears his throat and motions towards Kylo’s drink.

‘If you finish this we could move someplace else, if you’d like?’

She blinks up at him in a haze, her lips slightly parted, brows drawn together in confusion. He cannot help himself, leans in to give her a quick peck on that sinfully plush mouth before standing from his stool. She seems to regain her composure at that, downing the rest of her cider in one go and jumping off of her seat.

‘Why did you pick this pub, by the way?’ Hux asks as they’re heading out, Kylo’s dress swaying gently around her thighs, his arm on the small of her back as he leads her through the door. ‘Did you think I would like the interior design, or the music, or…?’

Kylo laughs.

‘You think everything revolves around you, Huxy?’ she says, grinning at his flustered expression. ‘They have gender neutral toilets.’

The realisation dawns on Hux.

‘Oh.’

‘ _Oh_ indeed.’


End file.
